Democide

Democide is a term created by political scientist R. J. Rummel[1] in order to create a broader concept than the legal definition of genocide. Genocide, for example, does not take into account government murder for political or ideological reasons. It is defined as large-scale murder by a government, similar to a genocide or ethnic cleansing. The twentieth century has seen massive democides motived by various ideologies such as abortion rights, some atheistic, some religious, some Communist, some Fascist, including the Holocaust.

The Khmer Rouge-instigated murder in Democratic Kampuchea (now Cambodia) caused the death of 1/3 of the Cambodian population.

The are examples of unjustified murders by governments which do not qualify as democide. For example, the dissappearados of Chile under Augusto Pinochet constituted thousands of people murdered, often for their non-criminal association with communist terrorists. This is an excellent example of the abuse of powers that occurs under oligarchies.

Sources

U.S. - Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs, Joint Commission Support Directorate (JCSD) The Gulag Study, February 11, 2005; "The sheer volume of this information lends credence to the fact that U.S. servicemen were detained in the Soviet prison camp system following World War II, and during the Korean, Vietnam, and Cold Wars." Retrieved from U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personal Office (DPMO) http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/sitemap.htm Spetmeber 15, 2007.